“Action-oriented Approach (AA)” as a new teaching method has taken an important role in teaching and learning of French Education during past 10 years. However, even though the new teaching method is very welcome for educators, now it is the time that we have to consider whether the key principle and fundamental notion of this approach is suitable for our language education environments and is theoretically appropriate for education. For that, it is necessary that we have to carefully examine this “Action-oriented Approach” from two points of views. First of all, from the angle of foreign language education, we need to verify whether this new approach could be appropriately applied in teaching and learning of Korean foreign language education or not. Secondly, from a societal perspective, we need to examine how this method, considering language education as everyday life itself, can handle some critical perspectives in the point of “status in quo” of “AA”. It has been criticized that language education as everyday life itself can make learners in everyday life to unconsciously acquire maintaining the ‘status quo’ during actions such as “educational inequality”. It is expected that this kind of examination will suggest us an improved way of “AA” for more effective and appropriate practice of French Education, and will give us an opportunity to think about the better way of teaching and learning model by “AA” in Korea.

This article examined the current state of Chinese education in Korean elementary schools. First of all, we surveyed Chinese education in elementary schools by dividing the types of Chinese curriculum into two categories: the regular and after-school courses. This study also analyzed the current situation of Chinese education by surveying Chinese teachers of the elementary schools in Seoul and collecting qualitative data of the curriculum time, objectives, and quantity of the Chinese education, class types, and the ratio of native Chinese speaking teachers. Overall, the results showed that the elementary students in Seoul really want to learn Chinese, but the educational environment lacks sufficient capacity and quality needed to meet the student demands. A lack of resources is demonstrated by a lack of class time and multimedia materials. The typical teaching method suffers from an absence of native Chinese speaking teachers. The frustration that comes with insufficient resources eventually leads students to lose interest in studying Chinese as their satisfaction levels become low. This lack of dedicated resources tends to discourage future Chinese language study.

This study aims at exploring the theoretical perspectives and research related to second language teacher identities. In particular, this paper focuses on the studies on the identities of English teachers in the Korean educational system. Major findings are as follows: First, based on the previous literature on teacher identities, teacher identities are defined as dynamic, multidimensional, and changing, as they continuously interact with individual, social, and cultural contexts. Second, it was found that studies have focused on (1) the meta-analyses of English teacher identities, (2) native-speaking English teacher identities, (3) the identities of non-native-speaking English teachers co-teaching with native-English-speaking teachers, (4) the identities of non-native-speaking English teachers including pre- and in-service teachers, and (5) teacher identity development through teacher education activities. Lastly, this paper brings up issues and suggestions on the formation and development of English teacher identities. It also offers directions for the future research on professional identities of second language teachers.

This paper addresses and discusses some major issues in Chinese characters education in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language (CSL).  Chinese characters teaching in CSL involves training skills such as character recognition & production, as well as reading & writing skills.  A very simple and common question from amateur is that how many characters should be taught at different levels and which set of characters should be taught at different level.  However, some important literatures in the CSL field in recent years (Jin, 2006; Zhao, 2009) advocate pragmatic views and emphasize that correctness of language forms can only solve the basic problems of “what”, but “when the language is used”, “to whom the language is used” and “in what situation the language is used”, are important in determining the successfulness of communication.  Following the pragmatic views of language teaching and learning, teacher incorporating one keyword in teaching CSL nowadays is “pragmatic based”.  Learners and teachers concern the actual targeted learning outcomes which are not just how many characters are learnt, but what the learners can do.  In order to achieve the outcomes, there are several issues teachers and curriculum planner to address and to discuss.  The skills involved include: 1. Characters collocations 2. Pragmatic use of language 3. Law of diminishing return in learning (Hsueh, 2005; Mark & Lu, 2005) This paper would use cases in tertiary education teaching CSL in Hong Kong to discuss the issues. 

Foreign language education in Korea has a long history. Since the introduction of Chinese characters in the 2nd century, many foreign languages have been taught in Korea. European languages were introduced in the late part of the 19th century, but the teaching of them experienced a setback during the Japanese colonial period. After liberation in 1945, English became the most important foreign language, while other foreign languages were called “second foreign languages”. German and French were the two most popular “second foreign languages” in the early years after liberation, but Japanese increased its weight as German and French gradually lost their appeal to high school students. Chinese is also steadily gaining in popularity. A corollary of this change was the government’s retraining program to convert German and French language teachers to Japanese or Chinese language teachers. The present paper discusses these and other changes in the status of “second foreign languages”, and recommends that the government take some drastic measures to revive the balanced development of “second foreign-language education”.

When the importance of various cu1tures is emphasized more and more, 1earning various languages can a1so keep off the cultural standardization. But today the second foreign 1anguage education is facíng a serious crisis. The balance of foreign 1anguage learners is not proper. The environment for learning the second foreign languages is getting worse. In the seventh curricu1um the credit hour will be reduced. Moreover, students staπ to 1eam the second foreign language only when they are in the e1eventh grade. Many German- or French teachers have to change their own subjects into another subject. The quality of education wiU go down. Changes should be taken place gradually in order t。 prevent side effects.